Gardeners have all the fun, and this week we have been totally blown away by the blossom, both in our own planetaria but also in local gardens, but this is nothing compared to Hanami, a Japanese festival welcoming spring. The “cherry blossom festival,” celebrates the ephemeral beauty of nature. People gather under blooming cherry blossoms for food, drink, songs, companionship and the beauty of cherry blossoms, could there be a better way to welcome spring?

After slapping on the factor 50, (which is not often needed at Owl Lane!) we have been celebrating spring in our own way, lawns have been scarified, bare patches seeded and a spring feed has been applied…

We are also starting the long and deliciously lovely task of sowing our hardy annual seeds… Corncockle, love-in-a-mist Californian Poppy and Larkspur are our choice this year, after digging over the bed, and removing all of the weed to Nick’s satisfaction we then created random shaped areas for each of the flowers with a handful of sand sprinkled on the soil marking out the areas. We then took out some seed drills, this way when the weeds germinate we know what is a weed and what is a seedling…

We have also been tickling the soil under our fruit, this means taking a garden fork and just duplicating the top two inches of soil, to loosen it so birds with their sharp eyes see any pests snoozing in the soil.

We have also filled the kitchen windowsill with pots of sweetcorn, which is being started now to grow into strong plants for planting out in June.

Finally we got so excited when Nick said we might try Tuscany this year, little did we know it was a courgette, but, yes, Tuscany and a few other varieties have been started in pots to plant out in June.